Summer Fun Facts

Not actually our Slip N Slide.

Fact #1-A brand new Slip N Slide has a lifespan of about 2 hours when 7 kids (5 being boys) have been playing on it.

Fact #2-When you set up a Slip N Slide in your yard, kids you may not even know will show up in your yard wearing swimming trunks within 2 minutes flat.

Fact #3-7 and 8 year old boys don't care how many other boys are in the tiny wading pool.  They will find a way to fit in there somehow, even if they only stay in for a few minutes, before they decide that it would be great fun to slide down the swingset slide with wet pants on.  They will have more grass tracked into the pool within 30 seconds than you knew you had in the whole yard.  They will also inevitably take turns shoving the running hose down their trunks until you catch them and make them stop.

Poor Slip N Slide.  When I was a kid, all we got was a long plastic sheet, and a water sprinkler.  (It was rough back then.) Nowadays, they have all of these annoying fun inflatable parts.  Of course when I brought the thing home, I couldn't find the attachment for the bicycle pump to blow up the inflatable things.  So, I had to hold the thingie (technical term) right next to the air valve doohickie (being technical again), and pump away in the 90 degree heat.  That was fun.  Then, I had even more fun.  Have you ever seen a cartoon where there's a water hose, and the water just kind of bulges up in one area of the hose? Yeah, you can tell this won't end well, right?  Well, when I hooked the hose to the Slip N Slide, I watched, paralyzed in shock, as the water just bulged up in the tube thingamajig (I hope I'm not losing anyone with all the techie speak), and then popped open.  Great.  I managed to get it repaired with duct tape (best invention ever), and it actually worked! For a while. Until the inflatables at the end popped, and eventually ripped off.  At least it was sort of cheap.  Except for the water bill that will be coming.

Fact #4- The same moody, (dare I say, hormonal? Dear God, please no! Not yet!) 9 year old girl who was just crying dramatically because she wanted to be able to play on the Slip N Slide without a bunch of "little first grade boys" (she didn't like it when I said, "Well technically, they're all 2nd graders now!), will end up in the wading pool later happily barking and howling like a dog with a 4 year old, and 7 and 8 year old. 

Fact #5 No matter what, popsicle wrappers are drawn like magnets to my yard.  Even with stern lectures about the easy availability of trashcans.  Maybe popsicle wrappers like Slip N Slides, too.